


An Unconventional Relationship: Lady Petra Wimsey in Oxford

by Eigon



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27559372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eigon/pseuds/Eigon
Summary: My version of Gaudy Night (which is rather presumptuous of me, trying to get to grips with such a great classic, and change it!)Quite a lot of the dialogue is directly from the book.
Relationships: Lady Petra Wimsey/Harriet Vane
Kudos: 2





	1. Harriet Vane in Oxford

The Dean looked around at the young women students in fond exasperation. "An academic gown worn correctly is a dignified and noble garment, but an academic gown flung on anyhow and the hood secured with a very obvious safety pin...." She turned to Harriet, and sighed. "When I think how our devoted generation sweated to get the right to these garments – and these young things don't care that for them!"  
Harriet had gone to the Gaudy for a complicated tangle of reasons – she didn't want her scandalous past to dictate what she did in the future; she wanted to do a kindness to Mary Stokes (Mary Attwood now) before Mary went off abroad for a delicate and dangerous operation; and, if she was really honest with herself, she needed to visit somewhere from her past that had nothing to do with scandal, so she could sort out some of her complicated and contradictory emotions.  
So here she was, in the Quad of Shrewsbury College, chatting to the Dean and trying to recognise other students who had been in her year, now that they were ten years older.

She soon found that her scandalous past could not be ignored, even at her old college. People were naturally interested in someone who had been tried for murder, and were quite happy to bring up the subject in casual conversation. Linked to this, she found she couldn't avoid mention of Lady Petra Wimsey, either.   
During the Gaudy dinner, she found herself sitting opposite an intense American woman, who mentioned that she had met Lady Petra. "She was just wonderful to me when I told her all about my work," said Miss Schuster-Slatt.  
Then Mary Stokes (Mary Attwood – Harriet must try to remember her married name), said "Oh, do tell us all about her! She must be perfectly charming, if she's at all like her photographs."  
"I worked with her on one case," Harriet said briefly, hoping not to be dragged into a discussion of the time she found the body on the beach at Wilvercombe.  
"It must have been frightfully exciting. Do tell us what she's like."  
All Harriet's anger and resentment came tumbling out, quite unexpectedly. "Seeing that she got me out of prison and probably saved me from being hanged, I am naturally bound to find her delightful."  
Which left Mary stuttering in confusion, and gave Miss Schuster-Slatt an opening to talk about her work which had allegedly so interested Lady Petra – something about the sterilisation of the unfit, and the encouragement of matrimony among the intelligentsia.  
Harriet let the conversation go on without her while she wondered what had come over her, that the mere mention of Lady Petra had prompted her to display every disagreeable trait in her character. If she was going to successfully leave the past behind, she needed to leave Lady Petra Wimsey behind too – and how on earth was she to do that?  
She recovered herself sufficiently to accept an invitation to coffee with the Dean after dinner, where conversation inevitably turned to the same subject, via her own detective novels. This she was able to handle with much more equanimity than she had shown at dinner.  
"I met her once at a dog show," said Miss Armstrong, who bred dogs. "She was giving a perfect imitation of an empty air-head."  
"Then she was either frightfully bored or detecting something," said Harriet, laughing. "I know that frivolous mood, and it's mostly camouflage – but one doesn't always know for what."  
It was Miss Barton, with her interest in criminology and her determination not to be diverted from the point she wanted to make, who irritated Harriet this time – but now her instinct was to defend Petra, rather than resent her.  
"What I would like to know," said Miss Barton, "is whether this dilettante lady does anything outside her hobbies of detecting crimes and collecting books."  
"I don't know," Harriet said. "Does it matter? Why should she do anything else? Catching murderers isn't a soft job, or a sheltered job. I dare say she does it for fun, but at any rate, she does do it."

She withdrew to her room, too restless to sleep, and returned to the knotty problem of her feelings for Lady Petra. Now she was outside her normal life for just a little while, maybe she could find the objectivity to examine her feelings honestly and decide what to do about them.  
It had been a surprise to her when she leapt to Petra's defence quite so readily. She had spent five years trying to push the older woman away, while at the same time never quite having the courage to end the relationship completely, because she knew how much it would hurt Petra.   
Petra had made her feelings quite clear, on that last visit to Harriet in prison before the trial, and she had reiterated that her heart belonged to Harriet at intervals ever since, including the period when they were working on the case of the body on the beach together. She could not offer marriage, of course, but it was certainly possible for two women who were good friends to move in together and share their lives. Eiluned and Sylvia had made a success of it, so why shouldn't Harriet and Petra?  
Harriet had been concerned, in that conversation in the prison, about scandal, and people whispering behind one's back. After five years of dealing with the aftermath of her murder trial – people still sent her anonymous letters from time to time saying foul things about her – this was less of a concern. She couldn't let anonymous letters determine the course of her life.  
She wondered if she would have succumbed to Petra's advances if Petra had been a man. On the whole, she thought not. She hadn't allowed anyone inside her prickly defences since the disaster that was Philip Boyes. Petra had been the most insistent, and the most patient, person who had tried to breach those defences. Everyone else had been firmly held off at arm's length, but Harriet found that far more difficult to accomplish with Petra.  
She'd never been to bed with another woman, but the idea of it didn't repulse her. She wondered what it would be like to share a bed with Petra. Harriet got the impression that she would be a considerate lover, though she'd admitted that her experience with other women was as lacking as Harriet's own.  
No, that wasn't what was stopping her.  
Partly, it was the feeling that she had to be grateful to Petra for saving her from the gallows. That cast a long shadow over their relationship, which could never quite settle down into easy friendship. However much she enjoyed Petra's company, and trusted Petra's judgement, there was always that sour note behind it that she was beholden to Petra for her life.  
Harriet had tried to ease herself away from Petra's company. She'd gone away, for a tour around Europe, looking for material for her next detective novels, travelling with a female friend. She had asked Petra not to write, and thought that the absence would make it easier, when she returned, to bring their relationship to a cool and friendly close.   
Petra had invited her out to dinner at Ferrara's, and to the theatre afterwards, as soon as she knew that Harriet had returned from her European tour. Harriet had accepted the invitation as an opportunity to bring about that cool and friendly closure to the relationship. At the end of the evening, Petra had asked if Harriet could put up with her occasionally, for dinner, or the theatre, and Harriet had not been able to bring herself to say no. Petra had babbled about it in the usual frivolous way she had when she was talking about something that was actually frightfully important to her – but Harriet knew her well enough by this time that she was not fooled by the frivolity, and her courage failed her. She couldn't send Petra away.  
So Harriet knew what Petra wanted, and it was rather more than the occasional meeting for dinner or the theatre. She was a lot less certain about what she herself wanted.   
If she was going to be brutally honest – and that was what she needed to be, she was terrified that, if she once gave way to Petra, if she once let her carefully constructed defences down, she would never be able to raise them again, and the world could hurt one so terribly if one had no defences.

Finding the drawing, of a crude female figure attacking someone in a scholar's cap and gown, blowing about the Quad when she went back to her room, was just one more disagreeable moment in the evening, but after disposing of the drawing down the nearest lavatory, there seemed to be nothing more that could be done about it.   
She didn't find the second poison pen letter until she was on her way home from the Gaudy. She stopped for lunch at a country pub, and remembered that she had left her cigarette case in the sleeve of her gown. She pulled out a piece of paper with it which, when unfolded, bore the words: "YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN'T YOU ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?"  
This was far more personal than the scrawled picture she had found in the Quad. She set the horrid thing alight, and ground the ashes to powder under her spoon.

Several months later, the Dean wrote to Harriet to invite her to the opening of the New Library. The Dean also implored her help to investigate a spate of poison-pen letters and other disturbing occurences at Shrewsbury College.  
Reluctantly, she agreed to help. She wasn't sure that she was the right person for the job, but she seemed to be the only person available. She had thought of asking Petra to help, but Petra was out of the country.   
She suggested that the College should hire Miss Climpson's Typing Bureau, as the ladies who worked there had experience of the sort of investigation that a case like this would require, but there she ran up against the understandable reluctance of the members of the Senior Common Room to engage anyone from outside the College. It would be an enormous blow both to the College and to women's education in general if word of the College's present problems should get out to the wider world.  
It seemed that the best solution for all concerned was for Harriet to go to Oxford under the guise of helping Miss Lydgate salvage the mutilated manuscript of her book, which had been defaced and partially destroyed by the mysterious poison pen writer.

She had been in Oxford for some time, working on the mystery, Miss Lydgate's proofs for her book, and her own research on Sheridan Lefanu, when she took it into her head to go down to Christ Church for the service. She had been shopping, and her arms were full of parcels, but still she lingered after the service to look around.  
A slim figure in a grey suit came careering out of a dark doorway and cannoned into her, scattering parcels – and, oh! the meringues that had been in one of the parcels – everywhere.  
"Hell!" said a voice that seemed absurdly familiar. "Have I hurt you?" The young man continued to apologise while helping Harriet back to her feet, and a moment later he was on his hands and knees gathering up the scattered and rather worse for wear meringues. He looked them over critically. "I say, if you'll say you forgive me," he said, "we'll go and get some new ones from the kitchen."  
He really did look very like Petra – the floppy blond hair, the slender, long-fingered hands – and he sounded like her too, babbling just like Petra did when she was talking piffle. She took to him at once. "Are you a relative of Lady Petra Wimsey?" she asked.  
"She's my aunt," he grinned, and introduced himself as Viscount Saint-George, heir to Petra's older brother Gerald, the Duke of Denver.  
"I don't know how well you know my aunt," he said, "but if you do get a chance, you might let her know that when you saw me I was looking rather unwell and hag-ridden and all that."  
"I will say you seemed scarcely able to crawl," Harriet assured him, "and, in fact, fainted into my arms, accidentally crushing all my parcels. She won't believe me, but I'll do my best."  
It was only after he had presented her with fresh meringues that he thought to ask her name.  
"Miss Vane!" he exclaimed, smiting himself on the brow. "My God! What have I done? Look here, you mustn't pay any attention to a word I've been saying – just forget all that rot! Aunt Petra's a dashed good sort, and as decent as they come."  
"I have reason to know it," Harriet said. "Don't worry, I won't give you away."  
"And – um – that old story I was ass enough to rake up...."  
"About the Viennese dancer?"  
"Singer – music's her line. Please forget that. I mean, it's an ancient story. I was a kid at school and I daresay it's all rot."  
Harriet laughed, and promised faithfully to forget the Viennese singer.

A few days later, she got a note from young Saint-George, inviting her to lunch.  
Harriet was under no illusions about the reasons behind the invitation. In his babbling, he had mentioned his money problems, and his hopes of applying to dear old Aunt Petra to dig him out of the hole he'd got himself into.   
Harriet was not inclined to be sympathetic. She had got through her time at College on much less money than she suspected Saint-George had at his disposal – but she was inclined to sample lunch from the excellent Christ Church kitchens.  
Saint-George was not available to provide the promised lunch when she arrived at the College, though. He had thought to send his friend Mr Danvers in his place, but he was himself in the Infirmary after a nasty altercation with a telegraph pole while driving (probably) far too fast.   
Mr Danvers gave her a very good lunch, and after that Harriet went to visit the patient.  
She was just in time to take delivery of a letter for Saint-George, with an Italian stamp, which she assumed to be the answer to the young man's plea for funds from his Aunt.  
In view of Saint-George's injuries – one eye obscured by bandages and the other black and bloodshot – Harriet agreed to read the letter out to him.  
"After all, better you than a nurse," Saint-George said, struggling to open the letter. "Sealing wax and the family crest. I know what that means," he went on, forlornly, "Aunt Petra at her stuffiest. How does it start? If it's 'Gerkhins', or 'Jerry', or even 'Gerald', there's hope yet."  
"It starts 'My dear Saint-George'."  
"Oh, gosh, then she's really furious. And signed with all the initials she can rake up, what?"  
"Signed with all her names in full," said Harriet, turning the letter over.  
"Unrelenting monster! I had a sort of feeling she wouldn't take it very well."  
Aunt Petra had certainly not taken it well, and she had conveyed her feelings in no uncertain terms – but she had agreed to cover his cheques until she returned from Rome and came to see him in person.  
It was not the sort of letter Harriet would have liked to receive, and it displayed almost everything that she resented most about Petra – the condescending superiority, the arrogance of caste and the generosity that was like a blow in the face. However:  
"She's done far more than you asked of her," Harriet pointed out.  
She agreed to write to Petra on Saint-George's behalf, since his dislocated shoulder meant that he could hardly hold a pen, though he managed to painfully scrawl a few words of his own.

It was harder than Harriet had expected to write the promised letter. After the fourth failed draft, she realised why. Saint-George had confided far too many things to her about Petra's private family business than she had any right to know. And to have heard them from a foolish, babbling boy rather than from Petra's own lips – it wasn't what Harriet would have chosen, but the thing was done now and she had to make the best of it.

The letter she got from Petra began in the manner that she had become accustomed to: "Come be with me and be my love, or if thou cans't not...." The proposal was rather more bitterly unhappy than previous letters had been, which made Harriet's stomach twist unhappily, but then Petra went onto mention the poison-pen mystery that Harriet was engaged in. Saint-George had told her about it. All Petra knew, really, was that it was disagreeable, and perhaps dangerous – and she wished Harriet well with it.   
Whatever Harriet had imagined Petra would say, if she ever heard of the case, it was not "Disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should." She might have expected an offer of help – but Petra had said that she was not her own mistress at the moment, and could not return to England. She might have expected Petra to caution her to be careful, and not to put herself in danger – but instead she had trusted that Harriet knew what she was doing, and wished her well with it.  
It put their relationship in quite a new light, seen from that angle.

She wrote back, explaining that she had been told about "the Oxford business" in confidence, and so could not share it, assuring Petra that she didn't think she was in any danger. "Thank you for not telling me to run away and play," she wrote. "That's the best compliment you ever paid me."

A little while after that, Harriet went with the Dean to hear the University Sermon at Christ Church – an oasis of normality at a time when matters were becoming increasingly fraught within the walls of Shrewsbury College. They lingered after the service to listen to the organist finish the voluntary that had been playing while the congregation processed out of the cathedral – the Dean was fond of early fugues. In a sea of caps and gowns outside, there was Lady Petra Wimsey, in a smart frock and matching hat, chatting to the Master of Christ Church as if it were the most natural thing in the world.


	2. Lady Petra in Oxford

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet finds out more about Petra's past.

It was always a little painful for Petra to return to Oxford. There was much of her time there as a student that she remembered with pleasure – those intense but ultimately shortlived friendships, the blessed quiet of the Bodeian Library, the joy that came from tracking down an obscure fact and working it into a watertight argument, punting on the Isis – but there was the pain, too, of doing all the work but being refused the rewards. In 1912 the University was still refusing to grant degrees to women.   
So she always had the distinct feeling of being an outsider in a place that should have been her natural home. She had made a place for herself, it was true (such things were always easier when one had money) but there was still a sense of loss when she returned to Oxford, of something precious and beautiful that had been withheld from her.  
She hadn't expected to see Harriet at the University Sermon – she was more concerned at that moment with a discussion of her wayward nephew with the head of his college – but there she was, in her formal cap and gown, in the company of an older lady don. Petra had been invited to lunch with the Master, but there was a little time before that for her to talk to Harriet and find out just what she'd been doing in Oxford for all this time.

She was ushered into the Dean's sitting room when she arrived at Shrewsbury College. Harriet looked – a little apprehensive, she thought.  
"What were you doing in Rome, Petra?" Harriet asked, "I was imagining some sort of sun-soaked holiday with occasional art galleries and museums, or maybe a case you were solving – but you look tired to death."  
Petra sighed. "Every so often, the Foreign Office calls on me to help, in an unofficial capacity, of course," she said. "You see, I am a very good hostess at parties, and there are occasions when rumpled feathers need to be smoothed among the diplomats. I have a sympathetic ear, in more than one language, and they will say things to me that they would never dream of saying to an ambassador or any of the official Embassy staff – and I know people, all over Europe, so we have people in common that we can talk about as well as the politics of the thing. There has been quite a wobble going on in political circles in Italy just recently. It may not be over yet, of course. I fear I may be dragged back into it at any time – so it's something of a relief to turn my mind to your problems here in Oxford for a while."  
"I had no idea you did anything of that kind," Harriet said. "I had no idea you'd got a First in History either, but the Dean knew."  
"Ah, that's the thing," Petra said. "I was never granted a degree. If I had got a First, I'd be wearing cap and gown like you." She went to the window and looked out over the Quad pensively. "I oughtn't to feel jealous of all these scholars, after all this time...."   
"But you do anyway," Harriet said sympathetically, feeling suddenly self conscious of her own cap and gown, which Petra had seen her wearing that morning.  
Petra smiled sadly. "I should be more sensible," she said. "After all, women like me paved the way for women like you. It's something to be proud of, really."  
"The only ones who should be ashamed of themselves are the old fogeys who stopped women from receiving the just reward for all their hard work until 1920," Harriet said hotly. "In a just world, you'd have your First."  
Petra was properly smiling now. "Why, Miss Vane, you do care a little for me after all!"  
"I certainly care about injustice," Harriet said, "and, dash it all, of course I care about you – I just – I mean...." She stopped in confusion, aware that her cheeks were turning bright red. "I didn't know any of this, Petra," she went on, regaining her composture. "I've just discovered that I've been too selfish even to try to know anything. But it isn't like you to sound so dreadfully discouraged. You look -"  
"Spare me, Harriet. Don't say I'm getting to look my age. An eternal childishness is my one diplomatic asset."  
"You only look as though you hadn't slept for weeks."  
"It did get very wobbly for a bit," Petra agreed, "and I'm sick of the propaganda, and the speeches and the conferences and the newspapers, and 'what do we get out of this?' At least Oxford is real, and the scholarship that's done here will last."   
She didn't want to tell Harriet the worst of it – that she'd thought that she and Bunter would be back in uniform on another Western Front if things had gone badly. At least she'd had some small part in smoothing things down, for a while at least. "I haven't thanked you properly yet for being so kind to Saint-George," she went on, decisively changing the subject.  
"Have you seen him yet?"  
"No; I have threatened to descend on him on Monday, and show him a damned disinheriting countenance. Precocious little monkey that he is – and it's characteristic of his impudence that he should have gate-crashed your acquaintance, after you had firmly refused to meet any of my people."  
"I found him for myself, Petra – after all, I couldn't very well mistake the likeness."  
They talked for so long about Petra's family that she eventually had to run before she was late for lunch, without her finding out anything about Harriet's mystery. She really must be tired, she thought, as she hurried back to Christ Church. She could usually direct a conversation better than that in the way that she wanted it to go – but Harriet could be so distracting, and then one was on another tangent completely, and talking about something else entirely. She hadn't intended to pour out her feelings about her family and the ancestral pile and all of that at all.

They agreed to meet again at Magdalen Bridge at three o'clock, to take a punt down the river, and discuss Harriet's mystery then.  
Petra was slightly early, so she had a good view of Harriet's arrival, crisp and cool in white linen and tennis shoes. Most of the younger people who ventured out onto the river these days seemed to do so in bathing suits, or shorts. Petra was dressed similarly to Harriet, both of them throwbacks to a more civilised era of punting – there had been no bathing suits on the river when she had been a student. She took the pole, while Harriet arranged herself on the seat.   
It was busy on the river, but they found themselves a quiet spot under a willow tree along the Isis, where Petra could read the dossier Harriet had been keeping of the occurences at Shrewsbury College in peace.  
"It's very good of you to agree to help," Harriet said, as she handed the parcel over. "I've done my best, but it isn't really very good, and I knew you would be very good at working out what was going on."  
Petra looked through the evidence Harriet had put together. Then she lit a cigarette and read through Harriet's notebook methodically.  
Harriet, meanwhile, brought out the picnic basket, handed out the sandwiches, and poured tea from the thermos.  
"I'll say one thing for the writing of detective fiction," Petra said, after a while, aware that Harriet was watching her quietly. "You know how to put your story together; how to arrange the evidence."  
She read for a while longer before she glanced up again – and Harriet immediately blushed scarlet. Petra looked down at the manuscript again, but for a moment she didn't see the page. It wasn't hard to guess what Harriet had been thinking while she was watching Petra, and the thought of it brought hope to Petra's heart.   
She went on reading, carefully and thoughtfully, to the end of the manuscript. "Well, Harriet," she said at last, "it's not a pretty problem."  
With her mind caught up in the poison-pen mystery, she could put to one side her thoughts about Harriet, with her cheeks flushed, sitting at the other end of the punt. With an intellectual problem to solve, they could communicate quite easily, without heading into the murky waters of personal feelings.   
"Your dossier is really very good," Petra said, "detailed in just the right way and - I'm glad you felt you could come to me with this," she added. "Will you give me tonight to think it over? If you will trust me to deal with it, I fancy I see one or two lines that might be followed up with profit."  
"I would rather trust you than anybody," Harriet said, and Petra's heart sang to hear it.  
With the dossier put to one side, they could enjoy the rest of the picnic, and feed the ducks, and watch the other boats going by on the river, in a little peaceful oasis of their own. It was very restful.  
It was so restful, in fact, that Petra fell asleep.  
She was awoken by the jolt of another punt hitting their own, with a shriek from the novice punter who had left her pole in the middle of the river, and was now adrift. Harriet pushed them off, and turned, and Petra grinned sheepishly at her. "Have I been asleep?"  
"Getting on for two hours," Harriet said, with a pleased chuckle.  
"Good Lord – you should have given me a shout! I'm most frightfully sorry."  
""It doesn't matter a bit. You were awfully tired."  
Harriet took the pole to get them back, while Petra sat down and did the steering.

They were going to meet again the following evening, but in the night fresh revelations came to light as Harriet was summoned from her bed by Carrie and Annie, the scouts, to a disturbance in the Science lecture room – where the poison-pen writer had apparently been pasting up her messages with letters cut from newspapers.  
So Petra came along that morning, with Bunter in tow to take photographs, to examine the evidence.  
That evening, Lady Petra Wimsey arrived at Shrewsbury College for dinner in Hall, and discussion afterwards in the Senior Common Room. She felt considerably fresher than she had the previous day, and had her wits most decidedly about her. She anticipated an interesting evening, meeting some of the potential suspects in the poison-pen mystery, and all of them first-class academic minds.  
Conversation over dinner was most exhilarating – and far more intellectual than the parties she had been hosting in Rome. She had enjoyed it immensely.   
She walked to the Senior Common Room beside Harriet.  
"What do you want me to do?" Harriet asked quietly.  
"Chuck the ball back to me if it runs out of the circle. Not obviously. Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth."  
"That sounds easy."  
"It is – for you. That's what I love you for. Didn't you know? Well, we can't stop to argue about it now; they'll think we're conspiring about something."  
They discussed crime, of course, and Petra brought up some of her earlier cases for them to debate the moral principles, and all the while Petra was bringing the discussion round to the importance of facts, and the dangers of suppressing them.  
"Of course," said Miss Hillyard, in a hard, sarcastic voice, "if you think private loyalties should come before loyalty to one's job...."  
There it was, the opening Petra had been waiting for – but the wrong mouse scurried into the trap. Mrs Goodwin the secretary, who had been absent for several periods from the College while she looked after her sick child, took Miss Hillyard's comment to heart, and was ready to give in her resignation and leave the College. She actually had her hand on the door knob when Petra said, into the horrified silence that followed her outburst: "Please don't go."  
And the conversation moved on to more general questions of conflicts of loyalty. "I once thought I had the agreeable choice between hanging my brother or my sister," Petra said. "Fortunately, it came to nothing."   
Then she threw into the conversation the example of CP Snow's book The Search – well aware that a copy of that book had been mutilated by the poison-pen writer, as detailed in Harriet's dossier. The plot concerned a scientist who falsified results in order to get a job – a careless error which was discovered, so he didn't get the job.  
"In the same novel," said the Dean, "somebody deliberately falsifies a result – and the man who made the original mistake finds it out. But he says nothing, because the other man is very badly off and has a wife and family to keep."  
"It sounds, anyway, like a manufactured case," said Miss Allison, as the discussion went on. "It could seldom happen; and if it did -"  
"Oh, it happens," said Miss de Vine. "It happened to me."  
And there it was – the motive that Petra had suspected was behind the poison-pen letters, and the hatred of women scholars. Miss de Vine was the intended victim of the letters, though the perpetrator had widened her focus to the rest of the College, which had obscured her original intentions.  
The conversation continued, of course, but Petra had got what she wanted from it and could relax for the rest of the evening.

Harriet accompanied Petra to the porter's lodge to see her out of the College. Padgett was at his post, as usual, and when he saw Petra, a curious expression flitted across his face. "Lady Petra Wimsey," he began. "I know the name from the newspapers, of course, but I've been thinking you looked familiar from somewhere else."  
"Really, Padgett? And have you come to any conclusions?" Petra asked.  
"That's it – now I hear you, it's all come clear!" he said. "You was a FANY in the War – I was in a platoon that came upon a wrecked ambulance, and we pulled this little blonde FANY out of the driver's cab, all plastered with mud and soaked through...."  
"Ah. Yes, that was me," Petra said. "I'm afraid I don't really remember much about the men who rescued me, but if you were one of them, I'm very glad to have met you at last, so I can thank you properly." She shook his hand warmly.  
"We never did find out what had become of you after we sent you off to the hospital," he said. "Posted to another part of the Front, you see."  
"I had a friend there who got me into a hot bath, and bullied the doctors for me," Petra said.   
"Terrible thing – there were a lot of terrible things going on back then," Padgett went on, remembering, "but all the men in the back of the ambulance were dead. Killed in the blast, I suppose."  
"Some died later," Petra said quietly. "I could hear them, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it." She shivered. "I should go – but I really am glad to make your acquaintance, Padgett."

Harriet watched Petra hurry away, and lingered as Padgett locked the gate. "Padgett," she said, "what's a 'fanny'?"  
Padgett chuckled. "It stands for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry," he said. "They drove ambulances all along the Western Front, and ran hospitals, and soup kitchens – they even had a mobile bath unit, with proper hot water. That was a welcome sight when you'd been wading in mud for weeks, I can tell you, miss. They did their own mechanicking on the ambulances, as well."  
Harriet looked after Petra in amazement. "I had no idea," she murmured. "Thank you, Padgett."  
It had never occurred to Harriet to wonder what Petra had done in the War. She certainly hadn't imagined that Petra would have got stuck in actually on the Western Front, in the midst of all the danger. That wasn't what upper class young women did, was it? Hadn't they been more likely to to have been nurses, or – Heavens, she was showing her prejudices now! She'd imagined women knitting socks for soldiers. Honestly, now she thought about it, she couldn't imagine Petra as either a nurse or a knitter of socks.   
She was certainly learning more about Petra since she'd come to Oxford than she had in the previous five years, and what she was learning put quite a different light on Petra's character than Harriet's first impressions of her. She was certainly rather more than a dilettante lady whose hobbies were detecting crimes and collecting books.

Petra had to go away for a couple of days – "to see a man about a dog" she had said, evasively, "in York."  
So Harriet was left to her own devices. She was standing with her nose glued to the window of an antique dealers' in the middle of town when she met Petra again.   
"What is it? Toby jugs or pewter pots or the dubious chest of Brummagen handles?"  
"The chessmen," Harriet said, pointing out the ivory chess set with the intricately carved pieces. "Have you found out anything useful?"  
"I have been scouring England for a man named Arthur Robinson," Petra declared, as if it had been a grand Arthurian quest.  
Petra's Daimler was parked nearby, and it was a fine afternoon, and they had a lot to discuss about the case, so they set off out of Oxford.  
Having parked in an out of the way spot, Petra explained about Arthur Robinson, who was the key to the whole poison-pen mystery, and his connection to Miss de Vine.  
In return, Harriet told Petra about the strange telephone call she had received, which seemed to have been designed to lure her to a place where she could be attacked.  
Somewhat to her surprise, Petra took it very seriously. "What do you know about fending off an attack?" she asked.  
"I dare say I could cope with most things," Harriet said thoughtfully.  
"Well, let me pass on a few things I learned in the War," Petra said. "There's a handy field here where I can practice various methods of strangulation on you. Don't look at me like that – I'm quite serious. I hung around with some Suffragettes before the War, as well, and some of them had learned ju-jitsu. The police could be pretty brutal when they were being arrested, you know."  
The field was handily screened from the road by a high hedge, so they were unlikely to be interrupted while Petra was trying to throttle Harriet and throw her to the ground.   
"Don't thrash about," Petra said. "Use my weight to upset me – try throttling me for a change, and I'll show you."  
They tried various methods of attack and defence, and at last Petra was satisfied.  
"I wouldn't like to meet you down a dark alley," Harriet remarked. "Petra, you don't seriously think -?"  
"I avoid serious thought like the plague. But I assure you I haven't been knocking you about for the fun of it. I have a feeling our Poison Pen is getting desperate, and might go in for a personal attack instead of rude notes and property damage."  
"Do you propose to give Miss de Vine lessons in self-defence?" Harriet asked.  
"I'm rather bothered about her. She's got a groggy heart, hasn't she?"  
They drove on, through a small town where Petra suddenly stopped the car outside a leather and harness shop. "I know what you want," she said. "You want a dog collar. I'm going to get you one. The kind with brass knobs."  
"Whatever for? As a badge of ownership?"  
"God forbid. Excellent against thugs and throat-slitters. Honestly – it'll turn the edge of a blade and if anybody hangs you by it, it won't choke you as a rope would."  
"I can't go about wearing a dog collar!"  
"Well, not in daytime. But when you're patrolling the College by night...."  
She went into the shop.  
They drove on a little way before Petra stopped the car again so Harriet could try it on. She felt rather foolish in it.  
"That collar deserves to be put in a glass case," Petra said, wrapping it up again. "It's the only thing you've ever let me give you."  
"Except my life...."  
"Damn! It must have been a pretty bitter gift if you can't let either of us forget it."  
"I'm sorry. That was ungenerous and beastly of me. You shall give me something if you want to."  
She asked for the chess set. It was a sufficiently generous gift, since Petra had estimated the price at being between forty and eighty pounds, and she would know in a moment if Harriet was inventing something just to please her.  
Petra was delighted. "My dear – of course! Would you like them now?"  
"This instant!" Harriet said. "Admit when I do a thing, I do it handsomely. I've asked you now for thirty-two presents at once. Be quick!"  
Petra took her at her word, for the first five minutes at least. Then she relented at the sight of Harriet's terrified face, took her foot off the accelerator, and obeyed the speed limit for the rest of the way back to Oxford.  
It took an hour and forty minutes to buy the chess set. Each piece was individually examined, there was a long discussion about the provenance of the set, and eventually the price was fixed, and the antique dealer went off to carefully pack the purchase.  
While they waited, Petra spotted a spinet in the back of the shop, and sat down to play, some Bach first, followed by Greensleeves. Delighted, Harriet joined in on the chorus.  
Petra stopped playing instantly.  
"Wrong key for you," she said. "God meant you for a contralto." She transposed the key, effortlessly. "You never told me you could sing."  
By the time the antique dealer returned, they had moved on to "My love herself adorning...." and both of them were enjoying themselves hugely. "Anybody can have the harmony," Petra declared, "if they will leave us the counterpoint."


	3. Placet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet makes her decision.

It had all been quite horrible.   
The civilised meeting in the Senior Common Room in which Petra presented her evidence to the staff of the college had turned into a hatred-filled rant from Annie Wilson when she was confronted with the evidence of her poison-pen campaign.  
It had been Annie all along – the widow of the unfortunate Arthur Robinson, who had been disgraced – he had hidden a letter that disproved his thesis, and had been discovered in that deception by Miss de Vine. Annie had harboured a hatred of women academics in general, and Miss de Vine in particular, ever since. Arthur Robinson had committed suicide, and Annie had taken the job as scout in the College to further her plans for revenge.  
Eventually, Miss Barton and Miss Stevens took Annie away, leaving all the members of the Senior Common Room shocked and horrified at the vehemence of Annie's anger against them.

And after the storm of passion, the calm.

Petra found Harriet in the Radcliffe Camera, going over her notes on Sheridan Lefanu. "Can you spare a moment?" she asked. "We can go up on the roof."   
As they climbed the stairs, she said: "I understand that the problem is being medically dealt with." Harriet made a sound of assent, and Petra reflected that it was just as well that Annie would be dealt with by doctors rather than the police – for the sake of the College as well as for Annie's own sake. It would remain a confidential matter, within the walls of Shrewsbury College, where life could finally go on as normal, without all the miasma of suspicion that had been created by the poison-pen letters.  
They looked out together over the roofs of the Oxford colleges, one of the most beautiful townscapes in the world both for the aesthetics of the view and for what those colleges represented – a calm centre of scholarship, going back for centuries. Though the calm had been disrupted at Shrewsbury, the ripples would soon die down and the calm would be restored.  
"What was it you wanted to say, Petra?" Harriet asked, still looking out at that glorious view.  
Petra had turned to look at Harriet in profile. "I want to ask your forgiveness for these last five years."  
"I think," said Harriet, "it ought to be the other way round."  
"I know – I should have acknowledged from the beginning – that you were sick of my pestering. Don't, for God's sake, ever think you owe me anything...."  
"Except my life...."  
"Look, can we wipe out all those old scores? You are free now and forever, as far as I am concerned – and there have been a few moments, in the last few days, when I dared to hope...."  
"I've been talking to Miss de Vine," Harriet said, as though she were changing the subject. "She's a very perceptive woman, you know. She certainly noticed the terribly unfair way that I have been treating you, and she gave me some very good advice. She told me to bring a scholar's mind to the problem and have done with it."  
"And have you?"  
"I'm – working on it," she said.  
There was a brief silence. If Harriet really was coming to a conclusion about her feelings, Petra was prepared to give her the space to reach it in her own time. "I have to go back to Rome next week," she said, "but on Sunday there's a Balliol Concert. Will you come to it? We can comfort our souls with the Bach Concerto for two violins. After that, I shall be clearing off and leaving you -"

It was a formal occasion, so Harriet wore her cap and gown and Petra, as usual, felt that brief sense of injustice that she was not similarly clad before shrugging off a thing that could not be changed and concentrating on the Bach instead.  
"Petra," Harriet asked quietly, under the sound of the applause for the last movement, "what did you mean when you said that anybody could have the harmony if they would leave us the counterpoint?"  
"Why, that I like my music polyphonic. If you think I meant anything else, you know what I meant."  
"Polyphonic music takes a lot of playing. You've got to be more than a fiddler. It needs a musician."  
"In this case, two fiddlers – both musicians."  
"I'm not much of a musician, Petra."

After the concert, they strolled together along the Broad towards Magdalen Bridge. "I was wondering," Petra said, after a while, "if you've worked your way towards your conclusion yet?"  
"Would it make you desperately unhappy if I said No?"  
"I can only tell you that if you would 'be with me and be my love' that it will bring me very great happiness."  
They stopped, beside the bridge, and Harriet turned to face Petra, searching for the right words.  
They were in Oxford, and any decision made here would be more real and binding than a decision made anywhere else. If Harriet said No now, there could be no going back.  
Petra bowed her head for the blow, with the faint hope that, this time, the axe would not fall.  
"Placetne, magistra?"  
"Placet."  
Petra was wrapped in the folds of Harriet's gown; they were kissing, and Petra was the happiest she had ever been.


End file.
